people are crazy part i-don't-know-how-many-and-one
this one intersects both my usual rant on our bizarre paranoia and profound misuse of the terms "terrorism" and "terrorists", and my recent rant on the wholly misunderstood and lethal selfishness of small plane owners.
it seems a good ole red-blooded american texas boy has flown his little airplane into a federal building, (this time it's the IRS), and innocent people are once again threatened far more acutely by our own collective insanity than any foreign malice. so, tell me, "patriot" act-ers, is this a "terrorist" incident? somebody flew a plane into a building, after all, and it would seem to meet the same criteria as some better-publicized incidents of a few years back. or is it just more of what people do, and something against which we need to open our society more, as opposed to less, in order to address? (i'm offering a vote right here and right now for the latter).
bad people do bad things. i would say, only treating a collection of people as a coherent and cohesive class of miscreants gives them the necessary opposition against which to organize and amplify their mayhem. only treating them as individuals (criminals, if necessary and warranted by their special crimes) gives us the proper basis to put their anti-social and psychotic behavior into the necessary focus by which to address it, and, hopefully, mitigate it in others for the future.
or, as marvin gaye so eloquently put it so many years ago now, "only love can conquer hate".
always makes me choke to hear the REAL terrorists running our geopolitics on a "faith" basis that we're a christian nation when we can't even get that simple little christian ideal right to begin with.
it seems a good ole red-blooded american texas boy has flown his little airplane into a federal building, (this time it's the IRS), and innocent people are once again threatened far more acutely by our own collective insanity than any foreign malice. so, tell me, "patriot" act-ers, is this a "terrorist" incident? somebody flew a plane into a building, after all, and it would seem to meet the same criteria as some better-publicized incidents of a few years back. or is it just more of what people do, and something against which we need to open our society more, as opposed to less, in order to address? (i'm offering a vote right here and right now for the latter).
bad people do bad things. i would say, only treating a collection of people as a coherent and cohesive class of miscreants gives them the necessary opposition against which to organize and amplify their mayhem. only treating them as individuals (criminals, if necessary and warranted by their special crimes) gives us the proper basis to put their anti-social and psychotic behavior into the necessary focus by which to address it, and, hopefully, mitigate it in others for the future.
or, as marvin gaye so eloquently put it so many years ago now, "only love can conquer hate".
always makes me choke to hear the REAL terrorists running our geopolitics on a "faith" basis that we're a christian nation when we can't even get that simple little christian ideal right to begin with.
Labels: rant
posted by kad barma at 3:02 PM
2 Comments:
I missed your post picking on the poor private airplane pilots and aircraft owners. Was this an AGW thing or the fact that they can fall out of the sky and ruin your day?
As for terrorism, we also have to divide it up between acts against civilian targets and acts against the military and if against the military, which has guns, then it is unlawful combat, with its own rules.
I would argue that what makes it terrorism rather than criminal activity is how effective it is in terrorizing society. If it is not effective, it is crime. If it is, it is terrorism and slipping into the realm of military reaction.
If we can deal with al Qaeda one trial at a time, it is just more crime. If we have to take out training camps in Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen, then it is terrorism and needs a military response.
In the mean time, as President George Bush said, go shopping and get back to normal. Doing otherwise won't help.
Regards — Cliff
Yep, that "fall out of the sky" thing--I was incredulous to read that a fire chief out in CA would say that a plane crashing on a street first and not a house directly "saved lives", as if the fact that lives were lost wasn't first, foremost, and always a result of the presumption to fly private planes over private residences. It's a huge pet peeve of mine that "oops" is the prevailing response, as opposed to criminal complaints putting the responsibility squarely back upon the assholes who presume to fly anywhere they damn well please. It's NO ACCIDENT when people are killed as a result, and not lucky that fewer are killed, since "any" is always more than ought to be. Maybe the pilot didn't mean to, but he or she sure as shootin' pulled the proverbial trigger by pulling back on that throttle and taking off, so lets chuck 'em in jail for every crash, and see how long it is before they start flying in more sensible and safe directions.
ok... better now...
As for "terrorism", I wholly reject the notion that "terror" moves the responsibility for criminal acts to some new highly-emotional category where we all get to have our civil liberties eradicated as a result. I get why shooting at a soldier opens you up to a military response, but I have no idea why we can't see that aiming at civilians is well-covered by existing attempted murder statutes, and is perfectly well served by enforcing them, and preserving our civil liberties in the process.
It's amazing to me how the yahoos braying "terrorist" cannot see that by responding as we have, we've given the victory away before the contest has even started.
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